Barton
by robbiepoo2341
Summary: Coulson took a chance on Clint Barton, and Clint would very much like to live up to that, but that doesn't mean he does things by the book. He screws up (sometimes on purpose) all the time, he blows up alien tech instead of bringing it back for R&D to study, and he tends to bring home stray Russian assasins. In his defense, he only did that last one once.
1. Mission One: We Need Fluffier Socks

A/N: This is my first ever Avengers fic. Hawkeye is my favorite character, and I think there is so much potential in the Avengers universe that I would very much like to play with all of it while I'm pining away waiting for the second Avengers movie to come out because I'm a baby and haven't learned how to wait.

For those of you following my Lifetime series, this, yes, this is the reason I was late updating this week. You'll also notice that holy cow the chapters are soooo much longer than Lifetime chapters because every chapter is going to be a single mission, and I'll only break up the super-long important missions (like the eventual tackling of Clint/Natasha meeting).

Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers or Baha Men or Blink 182 or Village People (and yes, you will see why I have to make such disclaimers later) or Star Trek or anything else in this fic that I might have mentioned for cheap pop culture referencing and timelining ;)

...

**Mission One: We Need Fluffier Socks**

Clint had been in the shooting range for a long time, but nobody had noticed him there. He was good at that—being overlooked. Just look like you belong there, and then look busy.

The junior agents had arrived. New recruits. And Clint was trying to decide how best to put an arrow through the egos of some of the snottier kids. A few of them seemed to think that their experience in the Army, in the field, wherever else Coulson and Sitwell had pulled them, made them top-of-the-class material.

There was a girl named Sharon, fifth from the last, good shot without being loud about it, who was top-of-the-class material, and no one seemed to notice her.

Coulson had. Clint knew that. Head brass was pretty good at seeing past blustering. But junior agents? They thought talk was important.

Second from the right. Big mouth. Muscles crammed into a shirt too small on purpose. Eyed every girl in the room like he was staking a claim. That was the one.

Clint stood up, grabbed his bow, and crossed the room. He was good at not making a sound. Sniper, thief, agent—same training, really. So he made it all the way to the kid's spot, almost inches away from him, before he noticed.

Muscles tensed, breath came in, and the kid spun on his heels. Clint made a show of ducking away from the gun the kid was still holding. Remind the kid he was still armed—it wasn't a good thing to forget.

Clint looked at the kid's target. Decent aim. Pulled to the right. Too many chest shots. Clint called up a new target sheet and turned to the kid.

He held out his hand. Waited.

"Sir?" Kid sounded unsure. Stick an authority figure in front of him and he lost the swagger.

He plucked the gun out of the kid's hands and fired—three shots. Head, two chest shots. He picked up the bow. Same pattern, just took a little longer. Shafts passed right through the holes he'd already made.

And he'd known the kid would rise to the bait—that was why he'd picked him. Because the kid looked at him, at the bow, at the quiver, and started to laugh. "What's the point of that thing if you can't—"

Clint held up a hand. He didn't say anything, just pushed the button that moved the hanging target even farther back down the shooting range. Further, further, until it was almost at the wall. Didn't have to go all the way, just far enough . . . there. Purple feathered ends sticking out the middle of three bullet holes.

The kid stopped talking, just turned and stared. Dramatic reaction, but not unexpected.

The rest of the shooting range was quieter now. Ah, so they'd noticed Clint was there. One of the kids must have noticed arrows. Or maybe it was just that the kid standing in front of Clint had stopped being a pretentious upstart for so long that they wanted to know what had finally shut him up.

And there, yep, there was the staring. Didn't bother him, not really, but it was still staring.

"You're never as good as the next guy that comes along. Don't get comfy," he said brusquely to the kid whose gun he'd taken. He packed up his bow and left the shooting range.

He grinned. Well, that was fun.

But he stopped grinning pretty fast when he saw who was waiting for him outside the shooting range. Coulson.

"Terrorize any junior agents today?" Coulson asked. "Make any of them cry this time?"

Clint grinned. _One time_. You make a kid cry _one time_ and you never get to live it down. "Only five this time. I'm slipping."

"Barton . . . ." Coulson shook his head like he couldn't believe he was having this conversation with one of his best agents.

Clint grinned. He'd been more than pleased about being asked to join SHIELD. Threw himself in, gave them his loyalty, and he loved it here (not that he'd tell Coulson that). But he was also not much of a team player, and he knew as well as everyone else that he was practically always on probation around here. Like they were just waiting for him to screw up.

So he'd screw up plenty. Terrorize new recruits, find his way into restricted areas. Get in a couple fights just because he could. Stick arrows in places they didn't belong. They expected him to be a problem, so that's what he'd be. At least then he'd be meeting their expectations. Fit in too well and he'd get kicked out for being too suspicious.

Drove Coulson nuts, especially after the strings he'd pulled with Fury. (Clint didn't believe half the things Coulson said about Fury, though. He'd met the guy. They got along, if that phrase could be applied to someone like Fury. And Fury seemed to be on board with Coulson's whole "second chances" bit. Not like it was the first time a crazy kid with a shady past joined SHIELD's ranks. In fact, Clint was pretty sure that was SHIELD's whole history right there.)

"You got a mission for me, sir?" Clint asked before Coulson could give a _lecture_. He was good at those, and despite the fact that it was painfully obvious Clint didn't listen to a word the guy said, they kept coming.

Probably because he knew Clint wasn't listening. Maybe Coulson thought he'd teach Clint by pure osmosis, if nothing else.

Sometimes Clint could see it in Coulson's eyes: "Why'd I let this idiot follow me home?"

Yep, there it was. That was the look.

"It's a simple recon mission," Coulson said, handing off the file. "Small town in Canada. Nothing big."

Clint nodded. Same story. Nothing big. Keep the leash tight.

Coulson raised both eyebrows but didn't say anything. The look meant, "Stop whining, Barton. Baby steps."

He opened the file with an exaggerated sigh. There was the usual stuff. Three to four agents recommended—meant he'd have partners. Great. Layout of the land. Something about a weird energy signature, almost unearthly. Energy readings, weather reports . . . .

He looked up at Coulson and held up the file. "Who're you sending?" he asked.

"You."

"And?"

"And you."

Clint blinked at Coulson and pretended he wasn't grinning like an idiot. "Yeah?"

"Unless you want me to send you with a babysitter. I know you hate being alone—"

"Shut up." Clint laughed anyway. "You sure, sir? I mean, you didn't just swipe a mission from someone else and give it to me to make me feel useful?"

"Barton, if I didn't want you to be _actually _useful, I'd leave you to stick around here and terrorize more of the new recruits."

"Speaking of—"

"I know. You think we don't screen before we recruit? We always take a few who need taking down a notch. Why do you think we even still let you out of your cage when the new recruits arrive?"

Clint laughed. "Glad to help."

"You're a menace."

He grinned lopsidedly. "You love me anyway," he said.

"Uh-huh." Unflappable, that was Coulson. Smiling, yes, but unflappable.

Clint made his way back to his quarters, found one of those SHIELD winter uniforms, and packed three quivers and two bows. Also food and water. And an iPod. Not the new one; he hadn't put any songs on it yet.

He checked out a plane and promised to bring it back in one piece no less than three times before the girl in the garage believed him. He was a good pilot; he didn't destroy SHIELD property until he was on the ground and being shot at!

Preflight checks, ground clearance, and another empty promise to bring everything back in one piece later, he was in the air.

Solo mission.

Clint grinned. 'Course, it wouldn't be a solo mission for very long. There'd been two SHIELD agents down for the first recon, and they'd gone silent. And three days was a pretty long time to go silent. But until he found them—or possibly what was left of them—he was running a field op.

Running. Running the field op.

Clint set the controls to auto pilot and leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. Solo mission. Huh.

….

The cold bit into his hands as soon as he stepped out of the plane.

He'd put her down somewhere quiet, covered in trees and snow, and far from civilization. Far from a hot cup of coffee and a warm bed, but then, if Clint really needed those things then he was going soft.

Snow was recent enough to crunch when Clint stepped in it. Hard for stealth, but these were the coordinates, so he just would have to deal with what he had. No problem.

Find a tree, make a perch, observe.

Two hours. Three. Four. Snow started to fall again. Reduced visibility, but Clint had seen through worse.

These were the last coordinates of the missing team. They must have left something behind. Some clue. Something Clint could spot.

Snowing harder. Clint sighed. He'd seen a cabin on his flight over, old and falling apart and probably never used since whatever storm had caved in the chimney, but it would be good shelter, and it was closer than the plane.

He did an unnecessary backflip out of his perch, just to keep in practice, and headed, grumbling, through the snow to the cabin. First solo mission since he joined SHIELD and he was freezing his tail off looking for clues that weren't there and chasing an energy reading that was no longer registering on any of the tech Coulson had sent along with him.

"Coulson, when I get back, we're going to have words," Clint muttered under his breath.

…

Clint took out his bag of sunflower seeds. It'd started as a joke. The Hawkeye thing. Perching, nesting, living in trees. But he liked the bird jokes—it meant they were paying enough attention at least to know who he was. Get noticed for talent, for skill, not for being a security threat—that was a good way to keep Coulson from changing his mind and throwing Clint back to the criminal justice system.

That and the fact that Coulson was convinced Clint would escape two seconds after they locked the door. Which was, of course, true.

But he embraced the jokes. Started eating sunflower seeds. Gummy worms. Problem was he was now pretty much addicted to sunflower seeds.

He took out a handful and popped them in his mouth and settled himself down in the cabin. He'd been right. It was pretty abandoned. Fireplace was totally collapsed, which made the whole place basically useless as a winter retreat. There was a layer of about an inch worth of dust everywhere. Five cockroaches so far. Three spiders. One bat that Clint was no longer on speaking terms with.

Wind was picking up. The picture outside the cabin's window was pretty much just a blanket of white falling down hard and fast. Wouldn't last too much longer, though. Clint had seen the clouds on the way over, and they were heavy, carried lots of snow, but they were moving fast. It'd pass this area and move on to some other, more populated and better prepared area sooner or later.

He popped another handful of seeds in his mouth and checked his equipment again. Same readings. Nothing new.

Snow. No readings. Sunflower seeds. Snow. No readings. Sunflower seeds. Snow. No readings—was the bag empty? Of course it was.

Snow. No readings. Snow. No readings. Snow was letting up now.

Clint sighed and rubbed his hands together. The friction-generated heat helped, and so did the long underwear. Still, he was going to have another word with Coulson when he got back about SHIELD winter gear being actually, you know, warm. That wasn't a huge request, right?

Snow was light enough now that he could go back out. Would've changed the landscape, so he'd need to readjust his bearings.

He got up and shook the feeling back into his toes. Number two on the list of Coulson complaints: standard-issue shoes.

Clint had some fluffy Christmas socks from whoever had been his Secret Santa this year. He'd start wearing those on snow-bound missions from now on. Probably against regulations. He'd add that to the list of infractions. (He really should have been officially reprimanded by now. Although maybe Coulson's lectures counted . . . .)

And then he heard it. Slight scuffle sound. Like feet on a doorstep.

Clint sighed long and loud, because he knew the best place to hide.

He pointed at the bat, as if it could understand him. "You bite me or give me away, I'm taking you back to the lab. They could always use a flying lab rat, I'm sure."

The bat just stared at him. Shifty little thing. Like Clint didn't know it was evil.

"Hello?"

Okay, most bad guys didn't announce themselves at your doorstep. Still, best to be careful. Clint fitted an arrow. "Yeah?"

There was a pause, and then, "Who's there?"

"Uh-uh," Clint said. "I'm inside the house. Guests do the introducing. It's traditional."

"Mind if I come in first?"

"I'm armed."

"I'm not surprised to hear that."

Clint thought about it for a minute and figured it couldn't hurt. "Door's not locked."

The young woman opened the door with both hands up in a gesture of peace. He recognized her from somewhere but couldn't quite . . . .

"You're that guy," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"The one that terrorized my class when we started training," she said and frowned disapprovingly. "You made Terry cry."

_Coulson, I am going to kill you. You did this on purpose, I just know it_. "You make _one agent _cry _one time _and no one ever lets you live it down," he said with a heavy sigh.

But now she was smiling and had put her hands down. "They send you after me?" she asked quietly.

"Well, when you stop checking in for three days and the energy signature disappears from our scanners, we like to check on things just to be sure."

"Coulson's like a mother hen."

"Try saying that out loud when he's around," Clint laughed. He put his bow away. "Barton," he said, sticking out his hand.

"Fielding," she said, taking his hand.

"You got an explanation for what's been going on here, Fielding? Because I spent hours looking for any sign of you and your partner at your last known position—which is where, by the way, any good agent would know the search party would start—and got snowed into a cabin in the middle of nowhere and ate all my sunflower seeds out of sheer boredom."

"You really do eat those? I thought—"

"Let's start with the missing partner."

Fielding blinked at him once, then twice. "Partner?"

"Yeah, you know? Annoying human being you get stuck with on missions whose job it is to make sure you don't, you know, disappear from SHIELD's radar or something?"

And then he heard it. Carried on the last of the snowstorm's gusting winds. The very loud, very hard to miss, "Who let the dogs out?" It was the burglar alarm he'd rigged for his plane. Unorthodox, but it never failed. After all, he _had _promised not to lose a plane this time.

Hawkeye had his bow strung in a second. Fielding had her pistol out, too.

"Bet I'm a better shot than you," he said.

"Bet it doesn't matter," she shot back.

They stared hard at each other, over bow and over pistol, the only sound in this god-forsaken place the echoing "who, who, who, who" of Baha Men.

"You want to tell me why your partner's hijacking my plane? I'd've taken you back all on my own, and I'm a pretty fair pilot, even in the snow."

"Put the bow down, Barton."

Clint grinned a wide, manic grin. "Uh-huh." He threw it aside.

And that stupid, demon bat came barreling at them like a bat out of, well, yeah.

It was a perfect distraction. She paused just long enough to try and fight off that rodent, long enough for Clint to pull his sidearm, shoot Fielding's hand and the hell bat (in that order), and then plug the gun right between her ribs.

"We're going to try this again," he said to her as she held her bleeding hand to her chest and looked at him like she couldn't believe he'd actually shot her. "Your partner is trying to steal my plane. And you're not that great of an actress, so please stop lying to me."

"Well," she said through gritted teeth, "if you're going to be polite enough to say _please_ . . . ."

"That's me. I'm all manners. Even housebroken. Want to grab my bow, Fielding? I'm attached."

"You get it."

"I have a problem with being shot in the back. Sure you do, too, but better you than me," he said.

She nodded grimly and crossed the little cabin to pick up her bow.

"I think I remember you from that class," Clint said. Keep talking. Look for an exit. Kill Coulson when this is over.

"Yeah?"

"I told Coulson you were a better shot than you thought you were, but you kept comparing yourself to the other agents," he said.

"How sweet."

"I speak only the truth."

"That's a lie."

"Yeah, that's a lie."

They'd almost made it to the front door when Clint was distracted. In his defense, it was a very distracting distraction—the floor started to hum and then move!

She'd known. She'd _known_ it was going to happen, because she was holding on to the door handle with her one good hand. She kicked his feet out from under him while he was still tipping dangerously to one side.

He didn't land flat on his back, though. Steadied himself with one hand and took a very good chance at a swipe with his bow that also doubled as a way to recover his balance. She ducked, and he sighed. Close combat. He was much better at ranged, but he'd do what he could.

Coulson was always bugging him to go to training, but Clint was always there for this part of it, the fighting part. How to take a punch and roll with it. How to dodge, deflect, keep an opponent on her toes.

Didn't say anything in the manual about moving houses, though. That was a new one.

Clint felt the floor move again and made a grab for her shoulder at the same time she made a grab for his hair. They met each other in a closed-fisted block, and then she tried to fight dirty with her knees. He spun to the left, towards her wounded hand, so she would have to turn to fight him, and in the few seconds of that turn, he had his hand on the door handle and yanked it open.

"You've got to be kidding me," Clint said. "Where did the ground go?"

Hundreds. They had to be hundreds of feet up.

She grabbed his hair and pulled, and he went tumbling back inside, crashing against the far wall. "Spaceship?" he asked and hoped he sounded like this was just a normal thing for him.

"Programmed an entire wing to look like an Earth dwelling," Fielding said, nodding.

"So. Not human?" he asked.

"No."

"But you look like one of ours."

"Isn't that interesting."

Clint frowned. Yeah, okay, he'd deal with this weird later when he'd dealt with the weird he was standing in. "If you've got this ship, why steal my plane?"

"We can't fly this thing back to SHIELD."

She shot at him. Aiming for the shoulder, the feet, the knees. Wasn't trying to kill him, now wasn't that interesting. "Uh-huh. So the flying saucer show is for my benefit?"

"From what Fielding remembers, you're much more dangerous far away than in close quarters. I'd like to keep you in one place."

"And not out there going for my plane, yeah, got that," Clint said as he worked his way back towards the door. "Just one problem."

"Oh?"

He flashed her a grin. "The door doesn't lock."

Clint let gravity catch him as he fell, turning with the fall so that he was looking right at the white powder below him. Took two bullets in the back, but that was what the Kevlar was for. That and keeping warm. Keeping warm was mostly why he brought it. But he was going to be sore.

He took out his arrow and hoped those eggheads at SHIELD knew what they were doing when they made this stuff, because he was about to trust them with his life.

_Splat _went the arrow into the snow, _splat _went Clint into the goo it had, in fact, formed on contact with water (or snow, in this case).

He'd kiss the girl back at R&D as soon as he saw her, he swore before he passed out.

…..

He woke up with a start. Not good. He wasn't supposed to pass out. Not good.

Something—no, make that someone—heavy was sitting on top of him and talking to her partner. "Yeah, idiot jumped out of our ship. Doesn't seem to have hurt himself too badly, though.

I'm almost impressed."

"I hate this," Clint muttered into the snow.

"Hush now," she said with all the sweetness of a snake and pushed a gun into his temple.

"Yeah, see, that's scary if I really think you're gonna kill me, but I don't think you are, so you can stop pretending. I think sitting on me is just fine to keep me here," he said.

"I can think of a few other creative places to put this bullet if you don't stop talking."

"Point taken."

His bow was lying just barely out of reach, but he had a few arrowheads he could try. Not the explosive one, not unless he was sure blowing himself up was going to help, too. And it wouldn't be helpful, since he knew about the other one out there somewhere.

So he took the sharpest arrowhead he could find and jabbed it just between her ribs. She bled, and he imagined explaining this one to the SHIELD laundry staff as he rolled out from underneath her. He grabbed his bow, and she was up and running, heading across the tundra . . . .

"Stop!" he called out to her. He saw the cracks, and he could see them criss-crossing his way, too.

She had her hand to her ear and was saying something to her partner.

He sighed. No one ever listened to Clint Barton. Well, fine, if she was determined to take him down . . . ! He fitted the explosive arrow and fired.

The explosion threw him backwards, but he twisted and fired a grappling arrow onto the nearest tree. The thing had to have roots in real ground and not iced-over lakes.

And two seconds later, he was hanging over a ravine and letting the line reel him in, watching over his shoulder as Fielding fell. She looked almost . . . green.

She hit the lake, and she wasn't moving. He fired a tracer arrow right through her, just to be sure, once he reached the top of the ravine, and watched her sink to the bottom.

Coulson was gonna kill him. That was extra-terrestrial, and he wasn't bringing it home. But Clint was definitely not jumping in that water. There was a tracer on the woman; they could start with that.

The latest song on his "Really Loud and Obnoxious Songs for My Alarm" playlist started up. With trumpets. YMCA.

It sounded close.

Clint climbed the tree easily, and he could see, just on the horizon, his black SHIELD plane. First time he'd been glad to fly a black plane into a tundra.

He jumped down from the tree and took off running.

…..

This new SHIELD agent lookalike was a big guy. Bigger than Clint.

But Clint had the element of surprise. And Blink 182.

The SHIELD guy was looking around desperately for Clint's hidden iPod—he knew he couldn't take off in the plane if it was broadcasting music on alert like that. Distracted, annoyed, and not expecting company. Clint's favorite type of bad guy.

He fitted an arrow and took a deep breath. Coulson was going to kill him for this.

He let the arrow fly, and the acid ate right the door lock. Another grappling arrow, and he was able to hang from the side of the plane and jimmy the pilot door open just wide enough for one more arrow.

_Poof_. The gas exploded in every direction, and Clint shut the door again and plugged the acid-made hole with one useless, snow-wet sock.

He heard coughing and stumbling around inside, and Clint didn't block the door as the alien tried it. The guy swung open the door, gasping in breaths, and then Clint tagged him with a tranquilizer tip, and the guy dropped, totally unconscious.

Clint waited until the gas had dispersed before he slipped inside and put down the loading platform so he could drag the alien into his hold.

He went for his communications system. "Coulson?"

The silence stretched on for a long time before, finally, there was a response. "Barton, do you know what time it is on this side of the continent?"

"Coffee's on me, then. Listen, I got a situation down here."

There was the long-suffering sigh of a guy who'd had to put up with all Clint's screw-ups since the beginning. "What happened?"

"You know that energy signature? The one we didn't think was earthly? Yeah, it's not. And I've got another unearthly surprise in my cargo hold right now. Trussed him up good and tight, early Christmas present for you, but it'd be nice if I could get him off my hands."

"What kind of Christmas present?"

"Green and with pointy ears," Clint said.

Coulson groaned. "Barton, I swear, if you're playing a prank on me—"

"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important." He paused. "We lost those two agents," he said. He didn't know how to explain that they were never lost in the first place, that they might have been aliens the whole time, or that they very possibly had been killed and replaced with alien doubles.

"How?"

"I'm not sure. They were gone when I got here." He took a deep breath. "I only saw the things that got 'em, not the actual agent-nabbing."

"Is there a chance they're still out there?"

Clint had already taken off to see if the cabin was there, but it wasn't. It was probably long gone, or else it had disguised itself as something new, and that weird energy signature was gone again. Not that it would do them any good. Clint had been _in _the actual ship and still hadn't picked up anything weird. Which was a big deal, for him. He could usually pick up on just about anything. Should have picked up on the eerie stillness of the place, the perfections even in the imperfections, the too-evenly spaced patterns in the wood. He was better than this, shouldn't have let them catch him off guard. "If they are, they're not here anymore. At least not in any way I can find them." He paused. "I can keep looking, sir. I've lost my lead, the thing took off into the sky and I couldn't get a good fix on it, but I can retrace, see if I can—"

"You've got an unknown entity in your cargo hold?"

"Yeah."

Coulson paused for a long time. Clint kept flying in a search pattern, thinking maybe either he'd find the disguised ship or it would find him—either way, he'd leave a tracer behind for Coulson to follow, and they might have a shot at finding their people. He relayed his plan in so many words to Coulson, but the guy had already made up his mind. "We're not losing a third man out there. You stay put until backup arrives."

"I can find these guys. If anyone can spot 'em, you _know _it's me."

"Clint . . . ."

Clint sighed. Yeah, he was in big trouble if they were first-naming each other now. "Fine, yeah. Stay put. Wait for backup. Keep an eye on the alien," he muttered.

"Clint, I'm telling you you're not authorized to go after these unknowns on your own." A long pause. "I'm telling you this over an open frequency."

Clint grinned. "Yes, sir."

…..

He'd been outside the plane for hours, but he'd rigged up a pretty clever setup back in the cargo hold in case his prisoner woke up. Involving knockout gas and a direct alert to his phone.

Plus, he'd given the guy an extra dose of tranquilizer before he left.

He was walking out in the open, away from any trees, a very obvious target. He scanned the skylines, looking for the slightest movement. A whisper, a glimmer.

There it was.

He fired, and it didn't dent the ship at all, but it bounced off of the thing pretending to be a cloud, so Clint knew where to place his next arrow. Explosive tipped.

This was why he'd taken three quivers.

The ship wavered into view, very big and very brown, and took a nosedive into a nearby drift of snow. It was smoking, and Clint imagined things were pretty hectic inside trying to put out fires, so he could easily just slip through and take a quick peek at their brig, just to be sure there weren't any agents left behind. Right?

About ten of those aliens poured out of an opening. Five went right for Clint, and five for the plane.

Clint sighed. Could they at least make it a challenge?

The five headed to the plane went down no problem. Guess they thought he'd be more concerned with the ones running for him and would take a little longer before he shot 'em in the back.

The five headed right for him were also easy. They were shooting at him, sure, but this was not his first high-tech snowball fight. He'd found a nice embankment to settle down on and pick them off one or two at a time.

He crawled out of his sniper position after the five aliens were down and there didn't seem to be any sign of more of them. This was almost definitely a trap, but, well, he didn't have anything else going on today, so why not?

Took off at a full run, then fired twice—first a gas arrow and then EMP. This trick only worked once, so as he tumbled into hallways that looked like something out of _Star Trek_, he kept the air mask close to his nose and mouth and thanked whatever lucky stars were still his to thank that he had thought to wear tinted glasses; they kept his eyes from watering too badly.

Turn right. Look for a way to go down.

The ship wasn't that big once he was inside it, but it was filled with aliens. The crew must've been about fifty, and while Clint was good at hiding in the shadows, the smoke bomb had given away his position. He looked for anything like an air duct, an access tunnel, and climbed inside.

His internal clock was ticking down. Ten minutes.

He found a way to go down in the service tunnels or whatever they were, and when he figured he'd gone down enough, he went sideways until he finally spotted something that looked like a human-colored hand.

It was deep, it was dark, and this was almost definitely a holding cell, so Clint was glad he'd let the EMP arrow go first and disrupt their systems so they would hopefully not be monitoring this one as closely.

"Fielding?" he called out.

"Who's there?"

Clint grinned. Okay, so alien replacements then. One theory confirmed. At least the human version was still alive. "You see the access tunnel to your right? Just about ankle height?"

There was a slight scuffling sound. "Yeah."

"I'm going to come through there in a second. You stay out of my way, just right beside it, and cover your eyes, got it?"

"Are you here for retrieval, sir?"

Clint laughed at being called "sir" and said, "Yeah, I was sent to find out why you'd gone silent for three days."

"Has it really only been three?"

"We may be creeping up on four. I've been here a while. You ready?"

"Yeah."

Clint grinned and pushed the grate open just wide enough so he could throw the little pebble-shaped objects he had in his hand. And then bang, flash, the light show was blinding to anyone who might be around except for the SHIELD agents scurrying back along the access tunnels—one with her eyes tightly closed and one with shaded lenses who'd known when not to look.

"Your partner?"

"Dead," she said hollowly. "If you didn't see him when you came here, he must have frozen to death out there."

"He get out?"

She nodded. "I took the fall for the escape attempt," she said heavily. "Let myself get caught, but put up enough of a fight that he could . . . jump for it."

Clint winced. "Tried that. Didn't go so well for my head."

"He said he could make it. And there's only one holding area; the ship isn't that big. I'd have known if he came back."

Clint nodded but made a mental note to tell Coulson to have his men sweep the area in case there was one very determined SHIELD agent stuck in a snowdrift somewhere.

"What's your name?" Fielding asked as she scuffled along behind him.

"Barton," he said. "And you're Fielding. I already met the other you."

Clint caught Fielding making a face in the reflection of the metal they were crawling in.

"Don't worry; she's at the bottom of a lake right now. Stuck an arrow through her forehead. He fished in his pocket for his phone and showed her how he'd rerouted the tracking signal to send to his phone. "Figured I'd leave it up to Coulson to fish her out of there."

"They're more than just copies. They take our faces and our memories," she said.

"I noticed. Yours remembered me from basic training."

There was a long pause and then, "Hey! You're the only who made—"

"—made Kerry cry, yes I know. I'm famous around SHIELD," he said, cutting her off. He held a finger to his lips.

"What?"

"It's too quiet," he said simply just before the cover got yanked off of the access tunnels close to Fielding's feet and a green hand reached for her. "Move!"

They crawled until they reached the point Clint had first entered (and there was the other useless SHIELD sock to mark his place). He opened the panel and slid out, then offered Fielding a hand out (she didn't look too steady on her feet, and he wondered if they'd even been feeding her here).

He turned to lead her back to the original hole he'd blasted his way into, but then he realized she'd refused to let go of his hand.

He'd noticed. Back in tunnel when he said he'd put an arrow through the alien Fielding's forehead. The slight hesitation. Concern for a fallen comrade.

"Yeah, and before you go arresting me in the name of intergalactic SHIELD replacements," he said, because his mouth never stopped, "I would point out to you that you're standing really close to my wadded up old sock."

"Yes?"

Clint grinned. Five, four, three, two, one.

His internal timing was impeccable. The explosive arrowhead couldn't have detonated at a better time, and he was already firing the second-to-last of his grappling arrows so he'd get pulled out of the explosion before he caught too much of it.

Of course, he still caught a lot of it, but not too much.

He scrambled to his feet and took off running. He could hear aliens running after him, just behind him. Their ship was a smoldering wreck, not about to get off the ground anytime soon, and they knew exactly whose fault it was.

He took some gunfire. Things were breaking, probably. But he knew exactly where he was going. He was still wearing the breathing mask.

A normal person would have hesitated, but Clint just jumped right in the water. He wasn't an idiot, and he'd holed out some snow he could use to hide on top of the ice.

They'd think he'd gone under. _Please _let them think he'd gone under.

He was breathing heavily, but he'd finally stopped running, and it was time to take the throbbing in his shoulder into account. He would have been surprised when he saw the snow turning red if he hadn't been so cold.

….

"You're a menace."

"But you love me anyway, sir," he said as he came to.

Coulson sat by his bed with a clipboard and a "Why do I ever let you out ever" look on his face. But at least he was the only one there. If Fury'd come, it would've been worse. "You blew up all your evidence."

He sat up a little straighter. "The guy in my hold?"

"Gone."

"Girl with the tracker in her forehead?"

"Gone."

Clint sighed and leaned back against his padded seat. He didn't have to look around to know he was back in the medical wing, but he was kind of hoping he'd at least have something to prove for it.

"You're a menace, Barton."

"You said that, sir."

"What were you thinking jumping in a lake like that? You looking to get hypothermia?"

"I was wearing a wetsuit."

"Why the h—"

"Couldn't find my real long underwear."

"You could've got frostbite."

"I knew you were coming. And it's not like I'd ever let myself lose my fingers. Stuck 'em in that goo R&D came up with that expands in water."

"You have really screwed up priorities, Barton."

"Yes, sir."

"You didn't recover your targets."

"No, sir."

"You didn't come back with anything we could use."

Clint grinned. "To be fair, sir, there is some wreckage you could salvage."

Coulson gave him a _look_.

"Sorry, sir."

"I expect a full report."

"Yes, sir."

"And you're going to write the letters to the families of the agents you didn't save."

"Yes, sir." And the look he gave Coulson made it clear that was punishment enough.

"And Barton?"

"Yeah?"

Coulson grinned. "Good job."

"Sir?"

"You didn't die. You got us good intel, and you did everything but get yourself killed to bring back your agents." Coulson leaned back. "Better than any other man I could've sent in."

Clint grinned. "Yes, sir."

"I've got a few other ideas for ops I'd like you to take care of."

"Off the books?"

Coulson grinned.


	2. Mission Two: This Isn't Sherwood Forest

A/N: I will not usually be updating this often. But the Age of Ultron stills happened, and there was lots of Hawkeye, and I got really really really excited and then this whole chapter just sort of happened.

Disclaimer: I don't own the character of Clint Barton or the rights to the Avengers or anything else Marvel owns.

...

**Mission Two: This Isn't Sherwood Forest**

The girl in R&D. Beth. She didn't mind when Clint kissed her, smack on the cheek, after the aliens-in-Canada mission. She'd even encouraged it—as long as it was accompanied by a personal commendation. Because apparently a good word from Clint Barton went a long way. Something about how he never put in a good word for anybody, so she must have done something right.

He'd kiss her again when he got back from this mission. He'd jokingly complained about the bad sunburn he'd gotten last time he got sent off into a desert, and she'd decided that was her cue to build her own sunblock. Odorless, so he didn't smell like a tourist, and it looked more like a layer of grime than the shiny store-bought stuff. Even put two different types together: one with bits of sand and one with bits of dirt, depending on the warm climate.

She was a genius, and he had two tubes of the stuff in his rolled up knapsack-disguising-his-quiver.

Maria Hill, on the other hand, didn't seem to appreciate being kissed on the cheek. Not even under the mistletoe. At the Christmas Eve party. After Coulson egged him on.

Clint was about ninety-five percent certain Hill was the one who sent him on this stupid assignment. With no extraction plan.

He'd known that was an eventuality. He and Coulson had talked about it. How Clint seemed to be annoyed by extraction teams more than the team actually seemed to do any good. How he liked to call them in only after everything had gone as poorly as possible. How he used them as a chauffeur service more than anything else.

But this felt like Hill. Really boring mission, lots of waiting around in the blinding desert sun with only the hint of activity, only a whisper that this might be the drop point.

"We should investigate every possibility," she's told him—very smugly—as she handed him a canteen and told him not to die out there.

What's worse—Hill was right. Clint was right where he needed to be, because there they were. Stolen weapons. They'd arrived a few hours ago to a small, remote camp out in the middle of nowhere.

It was good luck Clint was the best at spotting the unspottable. Easy enough to find a weak link, one guy who took a little too many trips into the desert. Easy enough to follow him one day. Easy enough to find a perch in the mountains and set up for the duration. Easy enough to wait, to watch.

The thugs who took the weapons were average at best. Probably a smash-and-grab group, nothing much. They weren't the ones Clint cared about. He was more interested in the buyers. Soon as he figured out who they were, he'd step in and break up their little rendezvous.

And so Clint was glad for the sunscreen, because he'd been sitting in his perch for days. The bad guys here were thorough, if simple. Set up shop days before they expected company and then prepped themselves, set up traps and back doors in case their buyers turned on them. Smart.

Nowhere near as smart as the buyers, though. Clint could see advance scouts in perches a lot like his peppered throughout the mountainside. Clint knew where every single one was, but he didn't want to take them out yet. He needed the buyers themselves, not their lackeys.

Day Five and it finally looked like there might be some excitement in the camp. Lots of patrolling, lots of chatter. Clint had planted a bug three days ago, but all he could tell from the bits and pieces of snatched phrases from the other side of a phone conversation was that the buyers made these thieves nervous—and they were coming ahead of schedule.

So _now _it was time to get rid of the snipers. Clint didn't need a bullet in the back, no matter what the SHIELD shirt was made of. (He was thinking of getting Coulson to design him his own suit. Something more . . . Hawkeye-like. The guy actually wasn't bad with costume design—something about Captain America fanart that Clint really didn't want to ask about.) And Clint had an arrow for each sniper.

Quick and quiet. No muss, no fuss. He knew how to stick to the shadows, and he had the advantage. He knew where they were, so he knew where to look, when to duck, when to hide. They didn't know to look for him.

One, two, three—three down. Same quiet technique. Head shot. Never take the chest shot; that was too easy to protect. And sure, his explosive arrows could take out Kevlar, but he didn't care to give away his position. Even if it would only give away the enemy's position.

Two more. Clint didn't have ears on the buyers, but he did have ears on the snipers, and he could hear through his earpiece that they were starting to realize something was wrong, starting to get a little testier, a little more alert.

And then, suddenly, things went quiet.

Dead quiet.

Clint frowned. He didn't think the thugs who snatched the weapons tech were that good, and the buyers certainly weren't about to take out their own advance men. So what happened?

It was a bad idea to investigate. A very bad idea. But if there was a third party involved, Clint had to know about it. He didn't like going in too exposed. He took risks, yeah, but not unnecessary ones.

He checked out Sniper Number Four's location first. The guy was very, very dead. Whoever took him out must have used a silencer; Clint hadn't heard a gunshot, and he'd been listening carefully.

He didn't need to check out Number Five to know somebody else was in on Clint's investigation. Didn't have time to see if it was friend or foe, though, because he could see someone approaching. Nice black car, tinted windows. Way out of place in the middle of a place like this. If the thieves were going for subtlety, their buyers didn't seem to care much for it.

He checked the ground quickly for the bullet. Russian-made—what were the Russians doing way out here? He pocketed it; he'd have Beth analyze it when he got back. And he turned to leave—right into the barrel of a revolver.

He held up both of his hands. "Okay," he said grinning. "I admit it. That right there—that was a good move. I'm usually not that easy to sneak up on."

The guy on the other end of the revolver didn't seem to care what Clint said. Possibly he didn't understand him—he just knew Clint was in his way and laughing about it. He pointed the gun threateningly and waved his arms to indicate that Clint should move away from Number Four.

Clint raised his hands a little bit higher and tried the calmer tone approach. "Sure thing, big guy," he said slowly.

The guy smiled like he had the upper hand and took a step towards the sniper—a step too close to Clint, who had, after all, been trained in this sort of thing. He grabbed the guy's wrist and tilted the gun down, guiding his arm, moving his aim. He kept his feet firmly planted and used his opponent's own strength against him, turning with him so that he would stay behind the guy. Finally, when the guy tried to flip Clint, Clint used that momentum to take the guy with him into his roll, pulling the revolver away with him and pulling out his bow in the same movement.

He tossed the revolver and fitted an arrow as the guy grabbed the rock face to regain his footing. A simple arrow, just the pointy tip, right through the forehead, and Clint grabbed the guy's shirt so that he wouldn't fall limply into the camp below.

Not that it would much matter. His cover was already blown. But it'd be nice to keep the bad guys looking for him around the four other snipers as well, just to spread them out.

Clint fitted another arrow and gritted his teeth, still thinking about his mystery assassin. Someone else was here. Someone good. They'd have to be that good to get past Clint and blow his cover without his noticing. Because Clint noticed everything.

Like the fact that the buyers' car had pulled to a stop and there were some particularly big and nasty looking guys getting out of it.

Clint sighed. There were too many variables here. This was supposed to be simple. Identify the buyer, intrude on the buy and take them down, retrieve the stolen weaponry. He could do that. But deal with another assassin and a bunch of guys trying to track him down? New variables.

Not that he couldn't do it—he just preferred to stay out of the line of fire until the big finale. He liked to be able to see the whole picture first.

Well, new plan. If they were sending out people to look for him, they'd start with the snipers, and Clint had about two minutes before the next patrol was close enough. He fitted one grappling arrow and rappelled down the side of the cliff. Probably a little bit obvious, but it was the fastest way down, and besides, the other way through the mountain was about to be cut off.

Clint kept his ears peeled for the whisper of a shot, for the barest hint of the other assassin, but he had reached the bottom before he heard anything—and that was a patrol running towards him.

He wasn't sure if he'd been spotted, so he ducked into the nearest crevasse and waited. They ran past him, but one of them noticed the rope and split the patrol into two groups.

About six men in each group. That was manageable.

He poked his head out. Memorized their positions. Then, the flash arrow. They'd stop to shield their eyes, and Clint was already fitting arrows for them while they stood nice and still as easy targets. One. Two. Three. Four. Five—where was Six?

A gunshot tore through the rock right beside Clint, and he saw the sixth guy talking into his handset. Looked a little unbalanced, probably still half-blind, but he was wearing sunglasses and a suit and tie. Looked professional.

Tie Guy took another shot at Clint, so he rolled out of the way and fired another arrow. This one disabled the handset, the next knocked the gun away, and the next one would have been right between the eyes if he hadn't heard the other six guys running and shouting in—was that Mandarin? It sounded Mandarin. Clint didn't know languages, but he'd been in enough places to pick up the basics. Like "two beers, please" and "you're under arrest," and while none of the phrases they were shouting were those two phrases, it sounded phonetically similar.

Clint switched arrows and fired an explosive one at the rock face just above the guys running towards him. Half of the rocks tumbled down in the patrol's path, which would buy Clint time to—

_Bam_. Tie Guy barreled right into Clint. Knocked him down. Clint didn't bother to try to get up, because he saw the kick coming. Instead, he rolled out of the way and reached for a handful of dirt and crushed rock.

He threw that handful in Tie Guy's face and pulled himself to his feet with a deep breath. Got the wind knocked out of him. Tie Guy packed a punch.

He reached back to fit an arrow, but Tie Guy had learned not to let him get that far. He rushed at Clint again, so Clint had to go hand-to-hand. He could do it, but it wasn't his favorite.

Tie Guy made a grab for Clint's hand when he threw the punch, so Clint faked and grabbed Tie Guy's shoulder with his other hand, using him as a vault to get behind him. Or at least, he would have done if Tie Guy hadn't grabbed Clint's ankle. But rather than getting dragged all the way back down, Clint grabbed his bow and locked it around the back of Tie Guy's head, taking Tie Guy with him with the momentum of Tie Guy's own strength as he tried to pull Clint back down.

They both fell hard, but Clint had the advantage of knowing he was going to fall. He slid with the fall so that he could get a little distance—just a little, only enough to fit an arrow. Tie Guy was already back up, already charging when Clint let the arrow fly.

Eleven inches. Less than a foot. Clint knew it was exactly eleven inches that his arrow had traveled before it went through that guy's throat. And all six feet of him was falling straight forward.

Clint ducked to the side and fitted another arrow, looking first to the rock fall he'd caused, where he knew at least six guys were waiting for him. But he was close to the camp now, and there had to be more guys.

He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, but he couldn't see anyone. At least not yet.

He kept his bow ready, an arrow fitted, as he headed into the camp—and then he saw why he hadn't been attacked yet.

About twenty guys, all in various stages of dead or dying or incapacitated. One looked like he'd been electrocuted. Two had apparently shot each other. Another looked like he'd been hit by a car.

Clint groaned because he already knew what he would find when he looked inside the tent that he knew had the stolen weaponry.

Yep. He was right. There they were—the little square impressions in the dirt where boxes used to be. Drag marks on the ground.

There was no way the mystery assassin could have done all this _and _had time to escape, though, so Clint rushed out of the tent and spotted it—the truck.

It was probably one of the trucks they'd used to get the goods here in the first place, and he recognized the sputter of an engine being hotwired.

He fired a basic, sharp arrow to puncture the front left tire. The truck wobbled for a bit, but the driver kept going.

Clint fitted a second arrow, this one for the back left tire, but then something happened. First, he was hit hard just between the shoulders (he realized only second later it was a bullet in his Kevlar). Second, the person driving the car threw some kind of smoke grenade at him (and not a real one—which was kind of nice of this mysterious person). And third, he heard someone shouting in English to "stop them both."

Clint had already hit the ground from the first bullet, and the smokescreen meant the bad guys couldn't see that he was already down. So the hail of bullets that he heard went mostly above his head. He did take one more in the boot, but it just grazed him—tore up the boot more than anything else.

Clint kept low to the ground and crept his way to the edge of the camp. He heard the sound of an engine close by and rolled out of the way just in time to avoid becoming road kill. From the brief glimpse he got of the car, it looked like the nice black one the buyers brought.

That car would be able to catch the mystery assassin's disabled truck no problem, and while Clint wasn't too pleased about the cargo passing hands from one bad guy to another, it meant he still had a shot at his mission.

Which, at this point, Clint figured would just be to blow the crates up. His cover was blown, and there wasn't much chance of him getting to see much more of the supply chain than what was already here.

He fired a grappling arrow and let it take him above the thicker smoke. He found a ledge, a nice, solid ledge, found his target, and fired.

The explosive arrow found its target, and the mystery assassin's truck caught fire. In a few seconds, the fire would reach the weapons.

He saw a side door open and a figure dressed in black tumble out of the driver's side. The figure took off running just seconds before the explosion.

The nice black car got hit by a good chunk of the exploding debris, and Clint saw three bigger guys hustle a taller, skinnier guy out of the car. Probably the head honcho. Clint fitted three arrows for each of the big guys—and then something hit the ledge underneath him.

He looked down and saw that, through the smoke, someone had spotted him, and this time, they weren't throwing smoke grenades.

He threw himself out of the way of the second one, which was thrown with much better aim and would actually have hit him, but now he was falling.

Luckily, he made a habit of recycling his arrows, if he could help it, and he refitted the grappling arrow and fired. It caught on something—Clint couldn't see what as he fell through the smoke, but he'd been aiming for the sturdier cliff face about twenty feet from where he'd perched on his ledge.

The rope went taught just in time, and Clint was glad he didn't end up splattered on a desert mountain as he used the momentum to swing past the people shooting at him. He landed on his feet and took off into a run. There was an opening just about ten yards from where he was, and Clint knew it led to a higher vantage point and a path back to where he'd originally hidden. (By path he meant a good ten-minute free climb followed by a twenty-foot drop into Clint's cave.)

He had almost reached the opening when he heard the gentle _tic _of something falling beside him. Grenade.

He threw himself inside the opening and hoped it would be enough.

…

Yep. There it was. The deep ringing sound in his ears and the drumbeat in his head. He'd been out for—how long, now?

His side hurt, too. And his chest felt funny. Exposed.

Clint looked down. Oh, great. No shirt. Nice of the bad guys to patch him up, though, even if the makeshift bandages were so dirty he could almost taste the rocks in his blood stream.

He wondered why he was alive.

And, apparently, tied to a chair.

He didn't have to wonder very long, though, because almost as soon as he was awake enough to realize his surroundings, one of the big guys from the black car was in his face, shouting something in . . . Hungarian? It sounded like Hungarian. Hard to be sure—there were still cobwebs upstairs. And in any case, it didn't matter the language if Clint couldn't understand it. And he didn't think it would help to ask for a beer, but he tried it anyway.

He got smelly breath and red, angry eyes in his face for his troubles, but Clint grinned. So, Hungarian. He'd been right. Nice to know his brain was still working.

The guy shouted some more stuff that Clint still didn't understand, until, at last, the guy got so frustrated that he grabbed the back of Clint's chair and tipped him over—_crash_—right into the ground.

"Ow," Clint said without losing his smile.

A second guy grabbed the back of Clint's chair and hoisted him back up. He looked a little calmer. Good Cop, then. He talked to Clint in measured tones, but this one was a language Clint didn't even know his usual two sentences in.

He caught a couple words, though. "Stark" and "Hammer." Two big weapons tech companies (though Clint was honestly surprised to hear "Hammer" in there—that company was pretty close to bankrupt, wasn't it?)

"Thanks for patching me up, boys," Clint said when the Good Cop stopped trying to talk to him. "I appreciate it, I do." He shrugged and grinned, but the shrug hurt something. Probably ribs. That would be a fun recovery. "It's just that I don't know how to thank you in whatever language it is you're speaking. I'm not normally such a rude house guest."

"Ah, American." This was a new speaker. Tall and skinny and dressed in a suit that looked like it was way too warm to be wearing out here. (He'd already taken off his suit jacket—which was lying, discarded, on another chair.) He looked no older than Clint, and he had a slight Chinese accent. "CIA?" the new guy asked.

"Freelancer," Clint said without missing a beat. "CIA's too serious for me."

The new guy blinked at Clint, then smiled. "No matter. We will find out who sent you and where you hid the missile plans—and where your partner is—soon enough."

"Friar Tuck sent me," Clint said. He chose not to react to the bit about the missile plans. Explains why he was still alive. There had been something else in this shipment besides just the weapons. "I left my Merry Men at home, sadly."

The slightest trace of a smile touched the new guy's lips as he rolled up his sleeves. He had an interesting tattoo on one arm. Ten little circles. "Naturally, you thought you could handle this assignment on your own."

"Partners get in my way," Clint shrugged—oh, right, he'd forgotten that shrugging hurt that bad.

One of the bigger guys turned to the skinny guy and said something in Hungarian. The skinny guy laughed and waved the comment off, then turned to Clint. "My friend thinks you're more trouble than you're worth."

"He's not the first to say that," Clint said. "Don't seem to play well with others—that's me."

The skinny guy laughed, light and airy, again. "I disagree. You had help today. For instance, you seem to be attached to the glorified Stone Age weaponry you brought with you." He reached out his hand, and the third and final big assistant brought out Clint's bow.

Clint frowned. "Careful," he said without thinking about it.

The skinny guy turned it over and over in his hands, admiring its every curve. "It's a sophisticated weapon. Not, I think, the same weapon that killed two of my snipers and twenty of my friends' men."

"What, you think I'm not a good shot with a gun, too?"

The skinny guy smiled again. It wasn't a normal smile—just the ghost of one, like he remembered how to smile but didn't do it often enough to do the actual smiling thing. "You have no reason to protect him if he's not your partner."

"Fair point," Clint said. "Another point: she's a she, so there's that."

The skinny guy paused and raised both his eyebrows. "Ah," he said simply. "So _she's _involved." He seemed to think about it for a bit longer before he laughed and nodded. "Yes, this seems like her handiwork."

Clint smiled grimly. "Let me in on the joke?"

But rather than answer Clint, the skinny guy said something to his big assistants. And judging by the looks—the wide, murderous grins—on their faces, it was probably something like "Kill him."

Clint wished he could reach his feet. He always kept an extra knife stashed there.

"What," he said, "you stopped caring about where I stashed the plans and who I'm working for?" Play for time. That was good.

The skinny guy laughed. "She has the plans, no doubt. And you're out of your league."

Clint laughed. "Always."

"As for who you're working for . . . ." The skinny guy threw Clint's bow at his feet. "There won't be enough of you left to send home, so why bother addressing a card?"

Clint watched as the skinny guy grabbed his suit jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and left. He looked down at the bow by his feet, then up at the guys who looked like they would enjoy having him for lunch. He grinned. "So," he said. "Who wants to go first?"

Good Cop pulled out his gun, and Clint took that as his cue to move. This was gonna hurt.

He rolled, with the chair, to one side and grabbed his bow. He'd kiss Beth full on the mouth when he got back, because it had been her idea to program a keypad into his bow so he could choose his arrow tips in any order with the press of a button—and detonate them.

He went the detonation route, and the two guys who weren't Good Cop were close enough to get caught up in the first blast. The second blast—when the rest of the arrows and their various toys blew up—caught Clint and Good Cop.

But Clint knew it was coming, and he'd put the chair in the way of the blast, so at least he was no longer tied to that rickety thing. But this meant he was out of arrows and stuck in the middle of a camp with just the knife in his left boot and no sole on his right boot, definitely a few bruised ribs, some good burns, and on top of everything, a painfully huge splinter in the palm of his left hand.

This escape was off to a great start.

He knew the explosion would bring investigators, so he cut himself an opening through the back side of the tent and tumbled through, holding his knife close.

The first guy he saw had his back to Clint—easy enough to take down—and now Clint had a gun. Not as good as his bow, but he was out of arrows.

And now Clint was in his element. Point and shoot. Find a target and take it down. It was like practice at the SHIELD academy, where they brought out those little cardboard targets at increasingly difficult angles. Only this time there weren't any little old ladies.

He emptied the clip on his stolen gun and then moved on to the next guy. He'd shot enough to pilfer two more guns, and he emptied those as well—all the while moving closer and closer to the edge of camp, to the black car.

He grabbed two more guns—one for each hand—and had them held off enough to pause and hotwire the car. Didn't take very long—old habits died hard, and this was one habit that SHIELD didn't seem to mind him keeping—and he was off and roaring down the stretch of desert.

He ditched the car somewhere in the middle of nowhere (and slashed all the tires to slow them down and bend the rims) and doubled back to find his original perch, the one they hadn't found for five days. He'd stashed an extra quiver back there, and besides, he had food and supplies to last him several more days. Wasn't safe to go to any of the nearest cities if they were still looking for him. Besides, he could patch himself up okay. Ribs weren't broken or cracked, just bruised, and the rest was Field Medical 101.

It was very nearly the next morning when he dragged himself back to his perch and collapsed in a heap against the wall. Home sweet home. At least for now.

He reached for his canteen to take a much-needed drink. And that's when he saw it. A little hand-scrawled note.

"Thanks for the assist," it said.

…

"I swear, Barton, we can't send you anywhere without you blowing something up!" Maria Hill said.

He was in a SHIELD medical facility, the nearest one he'd been able to find when he emerged from the desert mountains. They'd pumped him full of plenty of liquids and bandaged him up pretty good, and he got the standard lecture about taking care of himself. An agent's body should not be a casualty of the mission if at all possible. Stop taking stupid risks. That sort of thing.

"That's why you love me," he said, grinning. "And besides, I wouldn't have had to blow anything up if I hadn't had company."

Hill's gaze flickered, and Clint could tell she was reading pieces of his initial report. "Yes," she said mildly. "You encountered another agent?"

Clint leaned forward, his eyes bright. "She's good, Maria," he said. "I didn't once spot her until I'd blown up the truck she was driving." He paused, then added, "And that doesn't happen to me. Not ever."

Hill frowned, probably just as much at Clint using her first name as at his report. "You think she could be a threat?"

"I think she already is. And I think she's a step ahead of us. She knew they'd stolen plans as well as actual weapons," Clint said.

"Neither Stark Industries nor Hammer—"

"Yeah, well tell Obadiah-what's-his-name that he should check his inventory more carefully." Clint fell back hard against the too-white bed they'd set up for him. "She got away," he said, more quietly this time. "She got the plans, and she got away, and she set me up to take the fall for the whole thing."

Hill smiled. "If I didn't know better, Barton, I'd almost say that was admiration in your voice."

Clint laughed. "You'd be right." He shrugged. "You think I get the chance to meet someone that good very often?" He leaned forward again. "I think we should look into this, Maria."

She pursed her lips. "I'll see what I can do," she said, but it wasn't very convincing.

Clint sighed as Hill cut the transmission off. Maybe he'd talk to Coulson. Coulson wasn't as opposed to taking risks as Hill was, but then, Hill was on the fast track to second-in-command, and career agents were a lot harder to convince of anything off the books.

But Coulson? Spark his curiosity, dangle the idea of something even slightly out of the ordinary, and the guy was like a kid in a candy store. It had been his idea to start the Index, after all, even if almost everyone who was an Index candidate usually turned out to just be human. (Clint remembered the almost comic disappointment when Coulson tested Clint for anything supernatural and came up with zilch.)

He'd maybe just suggest that this mystery assassin was a little _too _good at not being seen. Generate some decent suspicion without actually lying.

….

Clint appeared in the doorway with an evidence bag and a cup of coffee. He set both down on Beth's desk and coughed to get her attention.

"You're bringing me coffee?" she asked, surprised.

"That's to say sorry for blowing up those two samples of sunblock you sent me with," he said. He pointed at the evidence bag. "That's a bullet I'd like analyzed. And this—" He grabbed her hand and pulled her in for a kiss. Full lip contact. "This is for the bow you designed. I'd like all of them to do that, pretty please."

She playfully batted him away. "You only come in here when you need something," she said.

"Not true. I also come in here when you want to experiment with your designs and don't think the higher-ups will let you." Clint shrugged. "It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I get sunblock—you get coffee."

She rolled her eyes and laughed. "I don't know why I put up with you."

"Yeah. I'm a menace," he said, grinning. He turned to leave, then looked down at his arms and remembered: "Oh, and that sunblock?"

"Yeah?"

"Real good at dealing with burns. Turns out the stuff's more powerful than you think. You might consider putting some of it towards fireproofing. I've noticed you've had a few more explosions in here lately."

Beth put both hands on her hips. "Like you don't know perfectly well that half of those are your fault."

Clint _had _been headed towards the door, but he turned on his heels and raised his hands in surrender. "_My _fault?" he repeated.

"You want trick arrows?" she asked. "You get to fill out the insurance forms."

And it looked like she really was going to pull out some paperwork, so Clint ducked out of there as fast as he could.


	3. Mission Three: The Hospital Fire

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe at all.**

**Mission Three: The Hospital Fire**

A fly had landed on Clint's thumb.

It was a very distracting fly, and it itched like crazy, but Clint stayed perfectly still and tried not to let it bother him.

The bow was taut. The arrow knocked. In just a split second, he'd let go. Just as soon as he saw a face.

This was the kind of thing he'd done half a million times. Okay. So it was like half a thousand. But that's not how the phrase went.

But it was different every time and yet somehow the same. Same bow. Same arrows. Same look on their faces in the split second before Clint split their skulls. But it was a different place in a different place with different wind and different vantages.

This one was easy, though. Clint had skyscrapers.

He normally didn't get skyscrapers. Assassination wasn't really a public sport. But he got them sometimes in other missions—when he was the sniper on the rooftops covering other agents, the "eyes in" gathering intel. He liked skyscrapers because they were pretty much the same everywhere. Flat. With birds.

The birds liked Clint. He stayed still and didn't threaten them. So after the initial scare of _oh no someone else is here_, they'd settle down and do their bird thing on the rooftops right alongside this totally-not-moving human being. It was actually pretty nice cover, because no one suspects a sniper where there are pigeons around.

Clint had been there for five hours. They didn't know when the attack was coming, only that it was planned for today, and so he'd arrived before the sun came up, positioned himself, and waited.

He could stay like this all day and into the next day if he really wanted. Poised and ready to attack. He kinda liked it up there anyway. Quieter.

He'd watched the people for a while, looking for any signs of strange behavior. He knew what the target looked like, and he'd recognize the guy in an instant, but the first indications were usually the environment. An open door, a backward glance.

He'd seen a drug deal go down and narrated the whole thing, in detail, to Coulson over the head set. Coulson probably wasn't amused, but Clint wasn't sure if the guy was even still listening. Had other things on his plate. Lots of chatter recently about some diplomat and threats against him, so Coulson was probably already working on that.

But just in case Coulson had tuned in to check up on his "stupidest assassin" (a title Clint relished), Clint liked to keep the radio chatter interesting.

Plus, he always liked getting the "reminder" about "proper use of communications equipment" and "the definition of radio silence." Like Clint would say anything if he didn't know for sure his line was secure. Like Clint would say anything at all if he thought anything but total silence would give him away. This was a cushy assignment, and for those, he liked to add a little flair to the monotony.

The fly crawled up Clint's thumb and onto his index finger. Tickled.

But he'd gone silent now, because the day had gone on and still there was no sign of his target, and he really should have seen something by now.

He did see a guy in a hoodie, and Clint watched that guy because he kept an eye on everybody who had passed underneath him that had their face in any way obscured. Could be nothing, but he wasn't trained to assume the best. Hats, hoodies, too-high jacket collars, too-big earmuffs—they were all possible disguises, and people in disguises were usually people on Clint's list.

A door opened. Guy came out with a hat on, but the sun was bright enough that it made him pause, made him raise his hand to shield his eyes and glare up into the light.

That two-second pause was enough identification for Clint. That and the glimpse of C4.

Three shots. Slug for both hands, stuff expanded and paralyzed the muscles on contact, so no button pushing even in death throes. Third was the head shot.

Guy went down cleanly, and Clint called it in. Wouldn't take the cleanup crew long to sweep the place of any evidence of SHIELD interference, and nobody would believe the civilians anyway.

Clint grinned. He sometimes liked to watch for any eyewitness reports after he'd been in a place. "And then some Robin Hood stopped the bad guy from going anywhere!" was his favorite.

Clint waited until he saw an agent he recognized before he moved from the rooftop, and then he slid back down and stalked into the nearest bar, where he had every intention of drowning himself in some good booze and lots of whatever food they had—preferably chicken wings.

But he didn't even get a table before Coulson's voice buzzed in his ear. "You still sober, or was that five minute pause too much?"

"You and I both know you have the most obnoxious timing possible, sir," Clint said, sighing, as he stalked back out of the bar. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere _now_.

"So still sober. Good. I've got a new assignment for you, and this one's high priority—I can't have you sullying SHIELD's—"

"Sir, with the greatest possible respect, you and I both know that I don't do anything _but _sully this organization's name, and you clean up after me."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd do that less, Barton."

"That seems like a lot of work, sir, and I need to focus all my energy on shooting things dead," Clint said.

"Remind me why I thought recruiting you was a good idea."

"You were temporarily blinded by my good looks, charm, and talent, sir," Clint said without missing a beat.

"My case files say something very different."

"Well, you don't want to go admitting on record that you found a handsome devil like me—you want to keep all the ladies for yourself."

"Barton—"

"Sir, have you got a mission for me, or were you just making that up to keep me from having any fun? Because I still haven't got back to base, and there are plenty of dives around here with half-decent beer and . . . ." He trailed off and grinned at the long, patient sigh. He shouldn't enjoy messing with Coulson as much as he did, but when he met someone so supposedly "unflappable," he couldn't resist.

"How'd you like to keep someone alive for a change?"

"Seems like the opposite of my job description, sir," Clint said. "Sounds fun."

"Good, because I'm assigning you five agents and some extra ammunition just in case."

Clint let out a low whistle. "Sounds important, sir. You sure you want to trust me with getting it done?"

"Barton, if there was someone out there better qualified, that's where I'd be."

"Yes, sir." Clint got the feeling Coulson wasn't really in the mood for joking around. "Mind if I ask who I'll be babysitting?"

"I mind if you're asking me over the comms, yes."

"Right. See you in a sec."

…..

Clint really, really wished he'd just straight up asked Coulson who he'd been assigned to protect. But Coulson was good like that and tricked him into agreeing to this mission before he even got all the intel.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Because now he was sitting in a private jet with this smarmy guy who never stopped talking about all the countries he'd pissed off that day.

Sitting in a private jet going to a _hospital_, and Clint hated hospitals with a spite that he usually reserved for bad guys and SHIELD agents who thought he was a circus sideshow (which, to be fair, he kind of was, but that didn't mean he had to take it from punk junior agents). For some medical procedure Clint hadn't heard of and didn't care to understand because, whatever, he was just along for the ride to keep this guy alive. Turns out lots of people wanted him dead.

Possibly people who had been stuck on a plane with the guy.

Five other agents, all of them with almost definitely more years under their belt at SHIELD, under his command, and it had taken him maybe five minutes before he "quietly suggested" that they stay close to the cockpit and let Clint do the one-on-one sitting-with-the-asset thing.

Mostly because Clint didn't mind the one-on-one sitting as long as he had an arrowhead to play with so he could fantasize about putting it through the guy's eye. He alternated which eye in these fantasies. But Clint couldn't guarantee the same of these agents. They were trained, yeah, but Clint knew the basics of SHIELD psychology, and it was much harder to protect someone you already didn't like.

Easier if Clint was the only one annoyed to death by this guy. Kept the other agents at 100% on the protection detail.

That and Clint was pretty sure having five other agents around meant at least one of them would figure out why he was fingering the arrowhead and then _he'd _be the one stuck in the other end of the plane. But the whole protect-the-asset excuse played much better in his head.

Besides, he'd managed to tune out most of the drivel, and he'd been in enough Coulson Lectures to know when it was time for a noncommittal "mmhmm" or "really?" or "oh."

They landed, and Clint already had his agents on the ground, checking the perimeter, securing the building.

There was a car waiting for them, and although the agents had already checked it, Clint gave it a once-over himself, because hey, it was something to do, and he'd always liked cars, and besides, he really, really wanted an excuse to get away from Mr. Talks Too Much.

The car ride was only ten minutes; SHIELD had already cleared them a path, and the hospital wasn't that far away. It was a very long ten minutes, and Clint could see that Agent Hammond, at least, looked like she might also benefit from an arrowhead to hold and fantasize about putting through his eye socket.

She just played with her gun—basically the same thing. He met her gaze, and she flashed him the smallest of _ah, so we understand each other_ smiles. Nice to know someone else was going crazy and it wasn't just him.

He assigned Hammond and another agent, Grant, to stay with the asset. Other three to sweep floor by floor. It'd already been swept by SHIELD beforehand, but Clint liked to be thorough. Besides, the sweep gave him time to get up high.

He was way too glad to get up high and _alone _and no longer stuck with the guy who could talk at one hundred miles an hour about nothing but himself.

He was so caught up in the euphoria of quiet that he almost missed it, the slight shadow of movement and the glimpse of red hair.

"McNab," he said into his comm, "check your six o'clock, fire escape on the north side."

"Checking," came the response.

Clint evened out his breathing and flattened himself on the rooftop. If he'd seen her, she might've seen him, too. He'd need a new rooftop.

Of course, there wasn't any guarantee that it _was _her. It could just as easily be someone else.

Yep. Someone else who was stealthy enough not to be noticed by trained SHIELD agents and Hawkeye himself. Someone else with red hair and the training that would get past all the other sweeps.

It was definitely her. He wasn't kidding himself.

Question was why she would be out on a simple hit like this one. He would've taken it personally if he hadn't even known he was going to be leading this op until an hour before he got on the plane. Otherwise, he would've thought she was doing this on purpose.

"McNab?" he said after all of thirty seconds.

"Nothing there, sir."

"There was. She's gone now?"

"Apparently. I can't see anything."

"Well, at least she didn't come in through that window." Clint chewed his bottom lip. "Right," he said. "We're going to need more backup."

"Because you thought you saw something?"

Clint almost smiled, because he didn't even get the chance to respond. Hammond did. "McNab, you haven't worked with Hawkeye before, have you?"

"Barton? No, can't say I have."

"That's obvious. He says he saw something, believe it." She paused, and he could almost hear her smiling in his general direction. "Where do you think he got the nickname from?"

"I thought it had to do with my addiction to sunflower seeds and gummy worms," Clint said blandly.

"You did that to yourself."

Clint reached up and switched radio frequencies, still grinning, keeping his eyes on the building. She didn't get in through the window. Not even she was that good.

"Coulson," he said.

"Barton?"

"I need backup here. Lots of backup."

It took Coulson a full three seconds to respond to that. Partly because Clint didn't usually need much backup—and five extra agents was actually a pretty big group for him—and partly because Clint usually led with something snarky unless things were really, really serious.

"How many?" Coulson asked.

"Give me anyone you've got in this area."

Coulson paused, and Clint could just see him making the commands with hardly a word the way he always did. Then, "That bad? What's the problem?"

"You remember when Hill sent me on that wild goose chase to track down stolen weapons tech?"

"And you blew the whole shipment up and nearly got yourself killed?"

"Yeah. You remember the third party I told you about?"

Clint could almost hear Coulson stiffen up, probably adjusting his tie, ready for action. "Here?"

"Yeah."

"Just her?"

"I don't see any other backup." Clint paused. "Coulson, you said you'd look into this mystery for me. Anything I should know going in?"

Coulson sighed. "All I've got is rumors, Clint," he said, and that's how Clint knew he was in trouble. First-naming. "Rumors and a lot of bodies."

"Great. I'll keep that in mind." Clint gritted his teeth.

"Barton?"

"Yeah?"

"I'll send backup. Don't get yourself killed in the meantime."

"Yeah, I'll try not to."

Clint kept low, so that the raised edge of the rooftop would conceal his movements, and army-crawled his way to the fire stairs on the back of the building. He fired a grappling arrow across the street, to the east—but he didn't use it. Instead, he leaped onto the next building's fire stairs, using a parked ambulance as cover. If she was still on the hospital's side of the street, there was no way she'd seen him. He cut the rope on the grappling hook and hoped that she'd focus her attention on that building and not on him.

Hard to tell with her, though. He'd only met her once and already he knew she wasn't to be trifled with. He'd really like to survive a second encounter.

"Hammond?"

"Yes, sir?"

Clint grinned. He didn't get "sirred" very often, and it was always fun. "Don't let him go inside 'til backup gets here."

"You mean I should stay in the car with him?" she asked. He could almost hear the "do I have to?" that came after that.

"Yeah. Sorry." Clint grinned. "Look, there's a woman. 'Bout your height, red hair, but other than that, I don't have much of a description."

"You've got prior?"

"Yeah. Don't let her sneak up on you." Clint paused and added, "She's Sitwell-levels of sneaky. Possibly sneakier."

Hammond let out a low whistle.

"Yeah. So just be careful, okay?"

"Same to you."

Clint nodded and then went back to radio silence. He didn't figure she'd come after the asset with so many agents around, but she might maybe try something during the surgery or during recovery. Maybe just before.

If it was him, he'd wait 'til after. After most of the civilians are gone and the nurses are on a visitation schedule that's easy to figure out. After the agents on guard duty start falling into a routine.

Clint made a mental note to call out changes in the routine every other shift rotation. Good precaution to take.

He caught another movement. If he'd been on the rooftop where he'd sent his grappling arrow, he would never have spotted it, but there it was. Just a shadow.

"Southeast corner," he whispered.

"Yes, sir."

He waited a full minute before he asked, "Well?"

"Nothing. There was nobody there."

"Nobody? You didn't see a single person?"

"One nurse. Older woman, maybe sixty. I've seen her around before."

Clint wasn't sure if that was comforting. He sighed. "When they actually start this procedure, I'm going to want two agents on every door and every window."

"Isn't that a little—"

"No." He sighed and resisted the urge the shoot something. It was a good thing the doctors they'd brought in were all SHIELD medics, because otherwise, he might have just called off the whole thing.

It was just one operative. One person who could fly under his radar. It shouldn't get under his skin like this, but it did. It bothered him that there was someone else out there _better_ than him, and he'd worked hard to get this good.

That was the game, when your job was assassination. You had to be the best or you'd end up on the other end of someone's gun.

When this was over, he'd ask Coulson if he could be the one to take her out. Do his own research and everything—that would be the clincher. Clint never did his own research, and Coulson would just be over the moon if there was one less project on his plate.

Backup arrived. Three vans. Fifteen more agents. Clint called directions and had every floor swept clean before Hammond and the asset entered. (Hammond was probably cursing his name for making her wait with that guy for so long, but oh well.)

He didn't see any sign of Her. Wasn't sure that was a good thing.

But it was good enough to send in the SHIELD medics and at least start the procedure. He had all the agents check every single medic at every single entrance. Yeah, it took time, but Clint was nothing if not patient. Had to be, job like his.

He had Hammond personally check all the medics, too. Not just because Clint trusted her to be thorough—though that was part of it. Because the asset had spent plenty of time with her and knew that she could be trusted to be thorough as well.

Clint waited through the whole procedure and had every chink in every brick in every building memorized by the time they were done. Nine hours. And he didn't move one inch.

Because he knew what _she _didn't know. That he'd slipped past her. That he wasn't where she thought he was.

He was especially careful to watch anyplace that might have been a blind spot for the other perch, the one she thought he had.

The medics cleared out. The agents swapped out guard duty so a few of them could catch some shut eye. Clint made sure only two slept at a time, in three hours shifts. Wasn't much, and they told him so, but he put on his best Coulson voice and reminded them who exactly was in charge of this op.

He'd spotted her again.

"South side. Fifth floor. Second window from the east," he muttered into his comm as he strung the arrow.

She was invisible to everyone else. Cameras pointed the wrong way. Just outside the view of anyone looking out from the inside. Poised like a ballerina right on the edge.

He let the arrow fly.

She looked up.

And she jumped.

It was five floors, so he hadn't been expecting it, and in the momentum of the jump, he didn't make the head shot he'd intended to make.

It was still a decent shot, though. Right through her right side, and she was losing a lot of blood. But she'd tied a bungee cord or something to her ankle, and then she was right back up on that ledge, dangerously close to his asset. Still bleeding, though.

Clint fitted another arrow, and she looked up at him. Shot three times. Crashed through the nearest window.

"I got eyes," Hammond said.

"Nice job," Clint said as he stood up. "I'm going to try to get another angle; she's spotted me."

He stood up and was surprised to find that he was a little wobbly. Oh. Shoulder.

He let the grappling arrow carry him onto the next rooftop so he could avoid too much running and jostling, and he tore off most of the bottom of his shirt to stop the bleeding. She'd got him pretty good. Must have been the adrenaline kept him from noticing.

Still usable, though, and he knocked another arrow, waiting for the next time he could take a shot.

"I lost her," Hammond said, and Clint swore through his teeth.

"Get back to the asset," Clint said.

"Yessir."

That was the nice part about being in SHIELD. Things ran smooth. Clear chain of command, and when Clint was at the top of it, he appreciated the ease with which they could handle pretty much whatever. Impressive group of people—even he had to admit it.

But after a flurry of impressiveness and after someone actually came up and bandaged Clint and told him to maybe take a break even though most medics knew better than to say stupid stuff like that . . . nothing. Nothing happened.

He'd hit her. But they couldn't find her. Not even a bloody rag. Some bleach and other cleaning stuff to wipe out any trace of where she'd been, but that was the only clue.

She was good. She was very good.

"Hammond," Clint said when the medic was gone.

"Yeah?"

"I gotta get a new perch. Medics are good on the patching up thing and not so much on the stealth. You take point, let me know if you see anything you don't like. I want to know if the air conditioning is too cold."

"Yessir."

Clint grinned. He liked Hammond.

He flung himself over the side of the building and shimmied his way down a drainage pipe. He was about to hit the bottom when he heard the telltale singing sound.

He dropped without thinking, and the knife was right where his head should have been if he wasn't this good. He spun with the momentum and had his arrow knocked just as he heard the click of a gun.

"Smart," he said, to stall, because he couldn't see her. "Not many people can do that."

"Maybe you're not as good as you think."

He was honestly surprised. It was like listening to poison on the wind, that voice, like a viper or a kiss or maybe both. But he had time to be surprised and fire at the same time. Didn't matter that he couldn't see a target, because that wasn't the point of the arrow he'd chosen. This one was a flash bang, and it _hurt _because he couldn't hear and it was hard to see even though he'd closed his eyes, but he knew where the hospital was, and he ran in that direction. He had agents covering everywhere around this place, and he had to trust them to have his back, even if he didn't, not in this case.

He fitted another arrow as he ran, and when he saw a flicker of movement, he fired.

He was very good, and he never missed, and he saw the body hit the floor before the rest of his mind caught up and realized that, yes, she was down. And out.

He counted the seconds carefully in his head. One…two…three…. He didn't see anything else. He didn't see her move. Black-clad with long, red hair, and she was facedown in the pavement. He couldn't see her chest rise and fall, but no way was it this easy.

No _way_.

But then three other SHIELD agents were there and fussing over him and oh, okay, yes, that was blood, wasn't it. Warm and way too much of it and it seemed to be coming from his stomach.

…

"Hammond," was the first thing he said when he woke up. Not because he wanted her there but because she _was _there, and she wasn't paying attention to him; she was looking out the window.

Hammond turned and fixed him with a reassuring smile, the kind usually reserved for . . . .

Crap.

Clint could feel them in him now, the IVs and needles, and they made his skin crawl he wanted them _out_ so he started pulling.

"What are you _doing_?" Hammond gasped, and she sounded horrified.

"Don't need 'em," Clint said thickly, but they'd pumped him full of something, and he didn't quite have his balance. "Where is she?"

"Who?"

"_Her_," Clint said, waving his hand. Like Hammond didn't know.

Hammond leaned back. "Nice, clean shot. Very Agent Barton," Hammond said. "She got you, too, but we pulled you back from the brink."

Clint grunted and folded his arms across his chest. "No need to look so smug about it," he muttered, then sat up a little straighter. "So, she's dead, right? Not like me dead, but for real dead?"

Hammond nodded. "You missed all the excitement. The asset wanted to, I don't know, give you a medal or something for saving his life and insisted we move you next door to him so he could talk to you while you were both recovering—"

"No."

Hammond smiled apologetically. "We _did _have a whole staff of SHIELD medics who had nothing better to do besides listen to him whine, so you're lucky they were around to put you back together at all."

"You're sure she's dead?"

"I attended the autopsy personally. It wasn't your best work—more a reflex shot than anything else, from what I can tell—but still, stopped her cold." Hammond smiled. "We're taking the asset out of here tomorrow morning, but with your mystery assassin dead . . . ." She shrugged. "It's been quiet the last few days."

Clint's eyes widened. "Days?"

"Well, yeah. Don't expect to bleed out on the pavement and have to be revived _twice _and not miss a few things," Hammond said, her eyes twinkling.

Clint sat back against the head of his hospital bed. He hated those beds. Crossed his arms. "You're still being careful." It wasn't a question, more of an order, really.

Hammond nodded. "Figured you'd stick an arrow in me if I wasn't."

"Perceptive." Clint narrowed his eyes. Then, "Tell me."

Hammond smiled. "As far as the public knows, we're moving him out right now. I've got most of our squad out there protecting a car with Agent Grant in it, and the ones that aren't have been in charge of moving our guest to a new room."

Clint noticed she hadn't said _which _room, so he quickly asked, "You're not going to—"

_Crash. _The door flew open, and in hobbled a hospital-gown wearing, agent-annoying moron with a huge, stupid grin on his face. "You're up! Wonderful! I was just going to insist that someone wake you and tell you the good news."

Clint gave Hammond his best Fury glare (which was about one hundred times less effective than the real thing, but Clint was improving), but Hammond seemed impervious. In fact, that looked like the corners of a sadistic smile pulling at her lips.

"Everything's set up for the big exit," Hammond said to Clint as if nothing was happening and they weren't wheeling The Idiot Asset Clint Almost Died Over into Clint's room to talk him to death. "We're even moving some of the patients back into the hospital, so everyone will think it's business as usual."

"I wouldn't," Clint said.

"What, you're expecting someone to get through our defenses after you killed Red?" Hammond laughed. "Besides, we're being careful, and the hospital wanted these patients back anyway. They couldn't wait much longer. This place has the best treatment available, you know, and some people still need it." Hammond shot Clint a meaningful look.

Clint sighed. He hated this plan. A lot.

…

"No."

"It's just one more day."

"Hammond. There are civilians now. They're bringing in more all the time. This was never supposed to take this long, and these people need those machines to survive. We can't ask them to wait."

"I know."

"I'm not going to put them in harm's way because—"

"_Coulson _got the tip."

Clint thudded his head against the back of his hospital bed. "Fine. If Coulson thinks our escape route's compromised, it is."

"Good luck."

"I hate all of you. I'm seriously thinking about going solo."

"Good luck getting someone to make more trick arrows for you."

"I hate all of you."

"I know you do."

Clint grinned. He liked Hammond.

He cut communications and sighed. One more day of Big Mouth. That wasn't so bad, right? He'd aced the torture courses at SHIELD. Couldn't be worse than that.

…

It was worse.

Clint had long ago stopped paying attention to what Moron was saying. He was practicing his breathing.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Release.

" . . . and I told the young prince that his choice in successor was foolish, but would he listen?"

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Release.

" . . . . Of course the whole thing was a shambles. Should have called me in sooner."

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Release.

" . . . . Nothing compared to your line of work, of course, though perhaps the attempts on my life are not nearly as successful as those on _yours_."

Clint narrowed his eyes. Broke his pattern. He should definitely _not _say, "That's because you'd have died twenty years ago if you'd faced half the stuff I have."

Clint didn't hear the next part, but then there was something like, ". . . lost most of my bodyguards. Of course, all part of the job. Shame to lose so many, but that's why men like us are rare, eh? Hard to kill. Survival of the fittest."

No. No talking. Don't even open your mouth.

" . . . bet I could pay three times whatever scraps they're giving you. What do you say?"

Clint blinked once. Twice. And he _had _to open his mouth now, because the guy was waiting for an answer, and Clint honestly had no idea what was about to come out of his mouth but it definitely wasn't going to be good, but here he went: "Coulson asked me to keep you alive."

That actually stopped the tide of words.

And Clint just kept talking. "Coulson. He's my handler. Most of the time. Sometimes Fury and Hill, but mostly Coulson. And he asked me to keep you alive, so I did. And I stopped the best assassin I've ever seen—which was kind of anticlimactic, I gotta say—and it wasn't to keep you alive. It was because Coulson asked me to, and if he asked me to kill you, I'd do it in a second."

Idiot was completely silent.

Clint had _definitely _screwed up now. Coulson was going to kill him or send him on training missions with whiny junior agents or something really awful or maybe he'd just sit Clint in a room with Fury when Fury was in the middle of something important and lock the door.

And Clint opened his mouth, to backpedal, to say pretty much anything he could think of to make it better, but then he said instead, "Do you smell smoke?"

Not good.

He grabbed Idiot, because that was his job, and went straight to the window. Didn't hesitate, just grabbed his bow and a quiver on the way down. He put them both through the window and only let go of Idiot for a second to fire the grappling arrow before he turned to catch Idiot.

His line broke.

He didn't break stride; they still had a way to fall. He fired the cushy landing goo arrow (he need a better name for it, really) and knew it'd catch them. He was more concerned with why his line had gone slack.

He felt his back hit the goo, but he kept looking straight up, until he saw it. Saw _her_.

"Knew it," he muttered under his breath.

"What's going on?" Idiot asked.

"Somebody's still trying to kill you," Clint said. "Hammond!"

No answer.

This was really, really bad.

He heard the shots, but he was already moving, already dragging Idiot behind him.

"Figured it was too easy," he said, because talking out loud helped him think, even if he wasn't paying attention to the actual what he's saying part. "Shoulda known. She figured we'd relax if we thought she was dead, and we did, and—"

The blast knocked him to his knees, and he could feel the heat of the flames even from that distance. He grabbed Idiot without thinking and kept his body between the flames and Idiot. As soon as he could stand again, he did, and carrying Idiot fireman-style was just going to have to cut it on the keeping-him-alive front, no matter how obnoxious he was, shouting about how he would not _suffer this indignity _or whatever.

The whole hospital was one big fire, and that was his fault, because he hadn't done the smart thing and taken the risk and got out of there before a single civilian crossed the threshold.

He probably would've been mad at Hammond, too, if she wasn't very probably already dead anyway.

Clint should've been dead, too. She'd been sloppy. Maybe she'd had to take the time to heal, too—he got her pretty good when he shot her last—and maybe she was feeling the crunch of the timeline.

Clint stopped in the middle of his sprint. She was standing in the shadows ahead of him. He still couldn't see her face, just red hair and a black silhouette, but he would have guessed she was smiling. She had them right where she wanted them.

So maybe she wasn't sloppy after all. Maybe she just didn't care about a hospital fire.

He drew his arrow back and flinched when he heard the shot. But if he was going to die, he'd take her down with him, and he let his last arrow fly.

He waited.

He wasn't dead.

That was good.

And then he felt a weight collapse on top of him. It was the idiot.

….

"She hacked my systems."

Coulson said it like a statement, but Clint heard the hurt.

"She's good, Coulson."

"She could've killed you, Clint," Coulson said, and Clint tried to pretend he didn't care that Coulson sounded more hurt about his systems being hacked than Clint nearly dying, but Coulson was first-naming, so he was obviously at least a little shaken up about it.

"Lucky I wasn't part of the mission. Just him," Clint said. He looked down at the ground.

"Lucky," Coulson agreed.

Clint let the silence hang between them for a long time, longer than he usually would, before he said, "Sorry."

"We'll talk about your handling of this mission later, and we'll talk about putting civilians in harm's way, and _you _get to tell Hammond's family along with the civilians'—I'm not doing that again," Coulson said. "But Clint? Don't be an idiot. You screwed up big time, and you're not off the hook, but your mystery assassin? She's the one with blood on her hands."

"Mine aren't clean either," Clint pointed out.

"I approved the mission," Coulson said.

Clint blinked. "What?"

"Your request to take her down. I'll even help with the research." A small smile played at the corners of Coulson's lips, and those were the scariest, because slight smiles meant Coulson felt secure in the knowledge he'd win. "I know you said you'd do it yourself, but let's be honest, Clint, I'm much faster than you are."

Clint felt just the beginnings of a smile. "When do we start?"

**A/N: Canon? There is no canon. This is basically me playing wishful thinking MCU Hawkeye being explored more in the movies and having more backstory and basically I'm making this up as I go along but if there was a MCU Hawkeye/Black Widow movie this is kinda what I'd like to see happening.**


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